`an ummi salamah, qalat: lam yakun tawbun ahabba ila rasuli l-lahi
salla l-lahu `alayhi wa sallam mina l-qamis.

Umm Salamah reported that no *piece* (thawb) of clothing was more
beloved to the Messenger of Allah (May Allah bless him and give him
peace) than the qamees.

Ibn Majah, Libaas, Mawdi` al-Izaar, hadith #3563

“When Bilal stood up for calling up the congregation he used to first say, “Assalamualaika Ayyuhan Nabiyyu Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatahu. Yarhamuka Allah”

Tabarani recorded this report in his “Awsat (1/27/1 - Majma al-Bahrain) tracing it through Niqdam Ibn Daud, Abdullah b. Muhammad b Al-Mughira, Kamil Abul Ala, Abu Saleh, and Abu Hurayrah.

For more information:

Azan was Performed with Salawat in Ottoman Times, an Account from Egypt

A few Naqshbandi shaykhs cultivated relations with Ottoman sultans.  We recall Ishaq Bukahri al-Hindi, for whom Sultan Mehmed II built the first Naqshbandi tekke of the capital shortly after the conquest [6].  Uzun Muslihuddin, a khalifa of Ahmad Bukahri from the area of Kastamonu near the Black Sea, had Sultan Bayezid II remove an ‘injustice’ (zulm) against the local population, having informed the sultan that local “pious people” had seen the Prophet “saddened” in their dreams [7].  Ahmad Sadiq Tashkandi and Sa’ban Efendi were both close to Sultan Murad III, the first perhaps initiating him into the tariqa and the second having him visit his tekke in the Fatih district on several occasions.   When Ahmad Sadiq died in the plague of 994/1586,  the sultan is said to have suspended the work of the Imperial Council for three days [8].  However, the relations that all these individuals established with the members of the Ottoman dynasty and governing elite were squarely  within the traditional mold of Sufi Shaykhs extending spiritual advice, guidance, and sustenance to the powerful in exchange for patronage.  Not one of these individuals was involved in dynastic or factional conflicts or influenced crucial political decisions.  In other words, none of this amounted to anything close to Ahrarian politics.

ref: Le Gall, Dina (2005).  A Culture of Sufism: Naqshbandi’s in the Ottoman World, 1450-1700 (pg 139) New York: State University of New York Press.

[6] Ayvansarayi, Hadikat ul-cevami, 1:219
[7] Taskopruzade, Shaqaiq, 1:561-62; Baldirzade, Revzat el-evliya, 37a; Belig-iBursevi, Guldeste-i riyaz, 180
[8] On the first, see Sadiqi, Manhaj, 11b-12a; NEvizade Atai, Hadaik, 362; Selaniki, Ta’rih-i Selaniki (Freiburg reprint), 211-12.  On the second, Mustafa b. Hayreddin, Silsile-i hocagan, 14b; Nevizade Atai, Hadaik, 371-72, 380; Selaniki Tarih-i Selaniki (ed. Mehmet Ipsirli), 1:343-44

Comments:

A clearer picture of Naksibendi relations with politics emerges.  They had little to do with political squabbles, but often represented the interests of the weak to the powerful.

The character of the Sultans is again demonstrated as it wasn’t Shaykhs visiting Sultans, but Sultans visiting and sitting at the feet of Shaykhs in Fatih district of Istanbul.

Which political leader of today would react to an injustice on the account of a Shaykh’s recounting of a dream of the Prophet (S)?

Le Gall says spiritual advice was given in exchange for patronage, but discounts the reality that this advice was given to commoners who had no patronage to give as well.  The understanding of the wealthy giving sadaqa to support dergahs which fed and housed the poor and the saintly is somewhat beyond the scope of a Non-Muslim reading of sufism.

There was, however, no noteworthy nomad rebellion against the authority of the Ottoman state until about 1500, when the nomads and semi-nomads, for whom Ottoman rule had become a distant and alien entity, finally found a focus for their political discontent.   This happened at the accession of Sheikh Ismail, of the Safavid order of dervishes, to the Persian throne as Shah Ismail I (1501), in whose state nomad groups were allowed a considerable political role.  The Safavids, descended from Sheikh Safi al-Din Ishaki (1252-1334), initially resided in the town of Ardabil in western Iran.  But in the fifteenth century the ancestor of Shah Ismail, Sheikh Cunayd,  emigrated to Anatolia.  There, among a group of nomads, already heterodox from a conventional Sunni Islam point of view, he began to preach an extreme version of the Shia. In the sermons of Sheikh Cunayd and later in those of Ismail himself, Ali, the son in law and nephew of the Prophet Muhummad, was accorded a cosmic significance which far exceeded his historical role.  As the religious leaders of extreme Shiite nomads, the Safavid gained the support which Shah Ismail was then able to use in seizing political power.

Marginalized in the Ottoman state, the nomads of Anatolia often gave their support to the newly-emerged Safavid dynasty. One of the resulting rebellions, that of Sahkulu (1511-12), represented a real threat to the Ottoman State, which still only had a fragile grip on Anatolia.  This situation brought about a change in the attitude of the Ottoman sultans towards the heterodox religious practices of many nomads and recently settled villagers.  In earlier times, the Ottoman sultans had largely concentrated on expansion at the expense of their Christian (i.e. Byzantine, Serbian or Albanian) neighbors.  In the process they exhibited considerable tolerance towards the heterodoxy of many of the dervish sheikhs who fought at the frontier along with their nomadic or semi-nomadic followers.  This changed with the arrival on the scene of the Safavids; in the sixteenth century the Ottoman Sultans became militant fighters for Sunni beliefs and practices.

These circumstances probably prompted Sultan Bayezid II (reign:1481 - 1512) to encourage the devish order of the Bektashis to guide the nomads towards Sunni Islam. To this end he sponsored the enlargement of certain lodges belonging to the order, such as those located in the small town of Osmancik in northern Anatolia or else in Hacibektas itself.  However, in order to communicate with the nomads, the dervishes had to adapt to their way of thinking, and, as a result accepted some of the beliefs they had been sent out to combat. Moreover, heterodox dervishes - that is, those suspected of sympathizing with the Shiite Safavids - were subject to violent persecution in sixteenth century Anatolia.  Many of them sought refuge amoung the well established and therefore less threatened Bektashi dervishes. In this way an order which was still more or less Sunni in character around 1500, metamorphosed in the course of a single century into a spiritual community dominated by Shiite conceptions.

ref: Faroqhi, S (2007). Subjects of the Sultan (pg 23-24) London: I.B Tauris & Co Ltd.

Mevlana Rumi’s verse of the Masnavi:

Who is the unbeliever? The one (who is) ignorant of (spiritual) master’s faith.  Who is the corpse? The one (who is) unaware of the (spiritual) master’s soul.

(ref: Masnavi Book II - 3325)

17th Century Commentary by Anqaravi:

“The unbeliever [kâfir] exists both according to the Way [tarikat] as
well as to the Law [sharî`at]. The unbeliever, according
to the (religious) Law, is someone who completely denies God and
everything which is on the side of God (such as) the prophets and
messengers and whatever appears from them. And according to the
people of the Law, any time someone denies on the inward (level)
but affirms on the outward (level), they call him a believer [=
because the Law judges who is a Muslim by what he says and
does].

However, the people of the Way, who are Truth-seeing
(and) don’t rely only on the speech and actions of someone, don’t
(automatically) recognize him as a believer. But among them an
unbeliever is someone who is unaware of the faith of the spiritual
master– who is the inheritor of the Prophet– and (who) remains
deprived of having a faith like the faith of the spiritual master.”

In 1538 there was a sea battle between the Ottomans and the Portuguese near the Indian port of Diu.  Notable success remained elusive and, from the 1540’s onwards, expansion towards the Indian Ocean was pursued with rather less vigor.  Nevertheless, the rulers of the principality of Atjeh in northern Sumatra, who wanted the sultan’s help in their own fight against the Portuguese, were granted military support in the form of cannons and gunners.  Independently of such ‘military missions’, Ottoman firearms specialists also seem to have found their way to the Indian subcontinent.  Moreover, the Ottoman sultans made occasional pious donations to mosques on the west coast of India, for instance in the town of Calicut. Since most of the merchants active in the Indian Ocean at  that time were already Muslims, such donations may have been inspired partly by the desire to create a political basis for the Ottoman sultans among these people.  In the end, however, it was not the Ottomans, but rather the Mughal rulers of Delhi and Agra who brought the trade center of western India under their control.

On both sides, the conflict between the Ottomans and the Portugese, who had themselves experienced economic and political difficulties in the second half of the sixteenth century, was seen as a religious matter.  The Portugese saw themselves as the patrons of Catholic missions, and their settlement in the Indian port of Goa was soon used as the base for missionary activities in the Far East.  During their expansion in southern Asia, the Portuguese kings and their officials always saw Muslim rulers and traders as their main enemies.  Meanwhile, the Ottoman sultans, in their capacity as protectors of Islam, were approached by the rulers of Atjeh for support.  Ottoman rulers also saw ‘religion and state’ (the formula used in many official documents) as indivisable.

ref: Faroqhi, S (2007). Subjects of the Sultan (pg 38-39) London: I.B Tauris & Co Ltd.